Free The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories by Joan Aiken Page B

laughing at it.

    The week passed peacefully enough. Sir Murdoch summoned the chairmen of the two parish councils and told them that any trespass over his land on the day of the Furry Race would be punished with the utmost rigour. They listened with blank faces. He also ordered man traps and spring guns from the Dominion and Colonial Stores, but to Ian’s relief it seemed highly unlikely that these would arrive in time.
    Clarissa dropped in frequently. Her playing and singing seemed to have as soothing an effect on Sir Murdoch as the songs of the harpist David on touchy old Saul, but Ian had the persistent feeling that some peril threatened from her presence.
    On Furry Day she did not appear. Sir Murdoch spent most of the day pacing—loping was really the word for it, Ian thought—distrustfully among his far spinneys, but no trespasser moved in the bracken and dying leaves. Towards evening a fidgety scuffling wind sprang up, and Ian persuaded his employer indoors.
    “No one will come, Sir Murdoch, I’m sure. Your notices have scared them off. They’ll have gone another way.” He wished he really did feel sure of it. He found a performance of Caesar and Cleopatra on TV and switched it on, but Shaw seemed to make Sir Murdoch impatient. Presently he got up, began to pace about, and turned it off, muttering,
    “And why should Caesar be a tyrant, then?
    Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf!”

    He swung round on Ian. “Did I do wrong to shut them off my land?”
    “ Well —” Ian was temporizing when there came an outburst of explosions from Lostmid, hidden in the valley, and a dozen rockets soared into the sky beyond the windows.
    “That means someone’s taken the Furry Ball,” said Hudson, coming in with the decanter of sherry. “Been long enough about it, seemingly.”
    Sir Murdoch ’s expression changed completely. One stride took him to the French window. He opened it and went streaking across the park. Ian bolted after him.
    “ Stop! Sir Murdoch, stop! ”
    Sir Murdoch turned an almost unrecognizable face and hissed, “‘Wake not a sleeping wolf!’” He kept on his way, with Ian stubbornly in pursuit. They came out by the crossroads and, looking down to Lostmid, saw that it was a circus of wandering lights, clustering, darting this way and that.
    “They’ ve lost him, ” Ian muttered. “No, there he goes!”
    One of the lights broke off at a tangent and moved away down the valley, then turned and came straight for them diagonally across the hillside.
    “I’ll have to go and warn him off,” Ian thought. “Can’t let him run straight into trouble.” He ran downhill towards the approaching light. Sir Murdoch stole back into the shade of the spinney. Nothing of him was visible but two golden, glowing eye points.
    It was at this moment that Clarissa, having established her red-herring diversion by sending a boy with a torch across the hillside, ran swiftly and silently up the steep road towards the signpost. She wore trousers and a dark sweater and was clutching the Furry Ball in her hand.
    Sir Murdoch heard the pit-pat of approaching footsteps, waited for his moment, and sprang.
    It was the thick fisherman’s-knit jersey with its roll collar that saved her. They rolled over and over, girl and wolf entangled, and then she caught him a blow on the jaw with the heavy applewood ball, dropped it, scrambled free, and was away. She did not dare look back. She had a remarkable turn of speed, but the wolf was overtaking her. She hurled herself into the telephone box and let the door clang to behind her.
    The wolf arrived a second later; she heard the impact as the grey, sinewy body struck the door, saw the gleam of teeth through the glass. Methodically, though with shaking hands, she turned to dial.
    Meanwhile Ian had met the red-herring boy just as his triumphant pursuers caught up with him.
    “You mustn’t go that way,” Ian gasped. “ Sir Murdoch ’s waiting up there and he’s out for